“You have to be lying to me. Is this all a game to you?”
The despair creeping up inside of me was life-threatening at this point. It was like a pool of water growing deeper and heavier with every passing second, and if any of what he said was true, the depth would swallow me whole.
I kept searching his eyes for something... anything... but I could see the truth inside of them, buried behind something else I couldn’t quite decipher. There was more to what he was telling me, and I needed to know it all.
“What sacrifice did your mother make? If mine risked her life to get me away from this so-called father, what did yours do, Zarren?”
“None of your fucking business,” he finally said before releasing me from his grip.
My hands fell down to my side, and he turned around and walked to the stairs. A part of me wanted to chase after him to find out why he had suddenly shut down, but common sense returned, and I quickly spun back around to see if I could get this door opened.
I had no idea why I even wanted to know anything about Zarren. Maybe it’d been the forlorn way he had mentioned his mother and mine as if the two shared some sort of connection, then he basically admitted that his own family only wanted to use me to further their own gains.
I decided not to waste another second on trying to figure him out. I was reminded of the vision I had earlier of him being led away and tossed into jail, and I used that to fuel my determination more. I slapped at the keypad and even used my own palm to try to unlock whatever was on it.
The damn thing kept flashing an error message as it beeped. The sound was incessant, and it only added to my despair. I didn’t have much time. I had no idea when the handoff to the Russians would be, but I had no intention of sitting around to find out. I kept trying any combination of letters and numbers until I heard a sound at the top of the stairs.
I spun around, then flattened myself against the door as Zarren descended them, this time fully clothed. The black fabric of his T-shirt was tight against his muscular arms andbroad shoulders. His hair was no longer slightly mussed as he had brushed it back into place. Still, he looked every bit as intimidating as he did last night and even a few minutes ago.
When he reached me, his hand snaked out and wrapped around my throat. “Stop looking for a way to escape because you aren’t leaving until I fucking say you are.”
Before I could do more than try to open my mouth, he effortlessly turned me around, then typed something onto the keypad, but his grip on my neck was so tight that I couldn’t turn my head to see what it was. The door swung open, and he spoke to the men standing outside of it.
“I need for you to stay here, Liam. Conor and I will be back soon. Make sure this one doesn’t try to flee. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of what’ll happen if she does.”
“No, Boss. I’ll keep her here even if I have to restrain her myself.”
“Like hell you will,” I managed to get out, but due to the hold on my throat, it lacked the confidence I’d hoped to deliver.
“She’s a mouthy one,” the man I now knew to be Liam said.
“Gag her if you need to. When I return, I’ll stuff that mouth full of something else,” he said at the same moment he released, then pushed me into the other man’s arms. After, he disappeared through the door, which slammed shut with a loud thud. The keypad indicated the premises were once more locked, much to my chagrin.
I turned to face the man who was even taller and more built than Zarren, then shuddered. He was now staring at me with curiosity that made my skin crawl. “Don’t even think about it.”
From there, I fled back upstairs. Once on the top level, I couldn’t remember which room had been the one I’d been placed in, so I tried different doors. Each one was locked, and I refused to even go there about what secrets each space could be hiding. For all I knew, there could even be others like me here.
After the fourth door, it actually opened, and I was greeted by the same view as when I’d awakened. I quickly hurried inside, then tried to lock this door, only to find out that it didn’t have an actual lock.
Of course not.
I was a prisoner, and the warden and his goons would need to be able to get to me when needed. That thought made me remember his parting words, and ones that had the desired effect of eliciting fear, but also something else I couldn’t quite describe.
Or maybe, I refused to admit that his very presence, brutal treatment, and crude words aroused me in some way. I’d never been the deviant kind and had always done everything I was supposed to. The good girl who never gave my parents a moment of strife or grief, and the dutiful girlfriend who’d stood by her man despite all the warnings otherwise. And I’d also been the star pupil who’d aced her classes, a model friend, and a sympathetic nurse.
In the midst of everything else, I had forgotten about my job. I’d been so worried about Drake, and as I thought back to seeing him in that video, nausea rose inside of me. Hurrying to the bathroom, I ended up dry heaving upon knowing that he had not only had sex with random dancers, but also the very person I’d trusted more than anyone else in the world.
Brae.My best friend, who’d thought Drake was a loser and would only drag me down, had come on his cock the same night she’d left my apartment after feigning a headache. She mentioned seeing a doctor the next day, but she had evidently meant it in a different way than I’d thought because that had been her hours after Halloween night turned into November morning.
The tears I had valiantly kept in check earlier came pouring from my eyes like a faucet, and I collapsed on top of the bed asthey fell. I didn’t even stop them as I had so much grief to get out. Not only was I now forced to mourn the loss of my career, the man I’d thought was my future, and the one I’d always considered my person, but as Zarren had said, my entire life as I knew it was now over. Some day soon, I would be used as a bargaining chip between three warring mafias, and nothing but death would save me from that fate.
Aurora had been in my care for almost two weeks now, and each day she was with me was one day too long. She berated my right-hand men, tried to escape at every opportunity, and she was all around just a pain in the ass. Thankfully, my uncles now wanted me to bring her to New York City so they could assess her in person.
They could fucking keep her for all that I cared, too. I hadn’t been to the fight club since she’d arrived, and to say that I was jonesing to beat someone into submission would be an understatement. I was twitchy, irritable, and just a killjoy to be around.
Aurora wasn’t any better. Every aspect of my life had been altered the moment I’d snagged her from her parking garage. I had to remove all phones, laptops, tablets, and gaming systems from my penthouse so she had no way of reaching the outside world.
Hell, I’d even caught her walking around trying to conjure up Siri, whom I’d never used or had. If I did, she would’ve likely asked it to call the damn cops for her. That was all that I needed.A bunch of fucking cops prowling around my place, not to mention them throwing me in jail. Sentencing could be as much as ten years in Massachusetts.
